From Mars' Journal - Aethon's 24th Cycle - Year 395

  I don’t understand. What did I do wrong? How did everything get so twisted? It was everything I had been working for. Everything I had ever wanted. Everything my family had ever wanted. Grandma has been teaching me for most of my life. All for this. All for what I had finally accomplished. What we had given up hope on. I was never as skilled as my older sister. Never as talented. My focus may be more unique, but I have always fallen short in everything but loyalty. Even with her gone. Even with the stain she left behind; all the loathing of all our friends. Everyone knew it. That I would never be her. Her or Grandma. The weakest mage in the family with the most unique… and the most wasted focus.

  But that was wrong. I did it. I pushed past my fear and their disgust. I was pushed by them. I found a well of aura inside me I had never so much as touched before. Crus was a good man; a hard working man. I couldn’t accept that he was… I didn’t accept it. I didn’t. I didn’t know what I was chanting as blue aura erupted from me. I didn’t even have my grimoire on me. But I had time. I had the moment, and the moments before it, and they were mine. I grabbed them, and I grabbed Crus, and I fought. I fought like wading through stone. Against stone. I cast with everything I had and I pulled him back. Pulled him back together. It wasn’t like solving a puzzle or putting pieces where they belong. It was a denial of his death. It never happened. I rejected what time had done to him. I rejected the time that had allowed it. For the first time, I cast ‘Undone’.

  It’s difficult to say how long my spells take to cast. Either time flows smoothly or my aura does, but never simultaneously. So I don’t know how long I was casting. When I was done, I was drenched in sweat. My dress clung to my legs and my hair was matted to my neck. I had used all the aura I had. But Crus… Crus was alive. Confused, but alive. A crowd had gathered and Aethon watched from the middle of the sky. I had done it. I had given a man his life back. I’d given his family their lives back. I had finally, finally surpassed my sister. Scrubbed her betrayal of the town from our family name. Everything would change. I was everything I always wanted to be and my bright smile challenged the sun. Both of us could give life. Both of us could. It didn’t matter how exhausted I was. It was everything. Everything.

  I had never felt such warmth like I could feel in that moment. I had never felt so welcomed or admired. I was a master mage. I had created a spell that could change the course of history. Not just mine, but of everyone’s. All the grins, all the awe of my friends, I basked in it—but it wasn’t them who mattered most. No, I had to find Grandma. I had to show her what I had done. She would be so glad. So grateful. So hopeful. I scanned the crowd, my smile unfaltering. I held out a hand and helped Crus to his feet as he tried to understand what was happening. I looked everywhere, ready to soak in the radiance of life with my family.

  And then I found her, and froze. She hated me. It didn’t make sense. She had never looked at me like that before. She loved me. Cherished me. All we had was each other. But as I looked at the older woman in the back of the crowd, at the curl of her nose and the wrinkles in her brow, that was all I could think. Hatred. I don’t understand. I don’t understand. I don’t understand.

  Aethon's 24th Cycle - Year 398

  The First Day

  Margaret’s grave condemned me. It reached out for me and dug its nails into my skin, pulling, scraping, leaving thin lines of blood along my arms. It and only it knew what I had done to the child it protected. I hated Margaret. I hated her before I knew who she was to hate. But this grave… this grave didn’t belong to the woman I despised and feared. It was too old. Too weary. Too small. The headstone wasn’t actually smaller, but I could feel the disparity anyway. This was the grave of a child. A child I had inspired to die. I wanted to help her. I hated her but I wanted to help. And I had—I thought.

  I thought I had helped back home as well, when I condemned my sister. I thought I had helped when I first cast ‘Undone’. But… this was the grave of a child. She had made this choice herself, somehow. Some way I didn’t understand. As I looked at her name, carved into tired granite, I felt my stomach churn. It wasn’t the guilt that made me sick. On some level I understood that Margaret had chosen this. That as soon as she saw the possibility, she’d thrown herself to it in a moment. That she would choose this too small hole in the ground over the life she had lived a thousand times. So I didn’t feel guilty because of her death. I felt guilty because… because I was angry. I was envious. Because I was the mage with the power of time. And a woman I hated, who had tortured and hurt and killed me… because she took my magic and got her past back. Because she got to undo her mistakes.

  Looking at her grave, I felt envy, and confusion, and above all else… hope. Hope that, if my magic could do that for her, maybe I actually had a chance for the same. To make a different choice as a child. And with this hope I leached from a young girl’s grave, I felt shame. It was this shame that carried my guilt and shackled me down. I didn’t know what to feel, or how to face what I was looking at. I hadn’t known either of these things since I learned that my grandmother was a liar. Since I learned I had sold my sister to death for the promise of pride my grandmother would never feel. But that… the unfamiliar intensity and fervor of the blessed hope I felt in that neglected graveyard… I couldn’t face it. I couldn’t accept it. Hopeless apathy to pain I could bear, but hope? It was a burden I couldn’t carry. So I stood, turned, and walked away like a ghost. I needed warmth without sickness. I needed a break. So I didn’t investigate what had happened to Margaret. Not yet.

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  I wanted to. I needed to. But I wasn’t ready to. I knew, the moment I promised myself that I could have the same chance Margaret had taken, I couldn’t go back. I would never have the same, and chasing it would break me. There were other mysteries to investigate in any case. Mysteries less painful and less sweet. And there was another flavor of hope, waiting for me in a little home nearby. Two girls who hadn’t met me, and whom I loved dearly. I wanted to see them, and that’s where I went.

  I ignored the world around me. The changes to the day I had lived so many times. The new people in new places. The new trailers of blue sparks only I could see. I knew they would lead me to more answers. To more people who needed help. Without Margaret, I didn’t know how, but I had learned by then what those trails meant. They were to help me right the wrongs of my spell. To fix whatever I had broken with this loop. Whoever I had broken. But I couldn’t. I wanted one loop. Three days. Three days to simply love Junia and Millie. To talk with Harrison. To live. To think about anything, everything, but what Margaret had done and how I could do the same. I needed to hold someone I cared about or I would think of nothing but the day of Camilla’s trial. Of standing up and telling them the truth. Of leaving with her and never looking back.

  I could feel the change in the air, even as I ignored it. The melancholy remained but the fear was less rigid. More directionless. Margaret wasn’t around to bring the quieted dead back, and much of the violence that carried with it was missing. It had to be missing. I still felt the pain of my first death. Of Hadley’s boot crushing me. I didn’t need to fear that, for the first day in a very long time. Neither I nor anyone else, and I could feel that in the air. I tasted poison with each breath of this realization, but I pushed it to the back of my mind. The girls. I needed to see them, and I had arrived at their home. My heart began to beat faster with each knock. Would they be alright? Would their mother be alright? Would they still need me? Would it be alright that I still needed them? I knocked, and I knocked, and I waited.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  I knocked again, and there was no answer. Something was wrong, and I couldn’t put my finger on what, but it shortened my breaths. My skin felt hot as I knocked again, and I finally paused. I could handle this. I had faced worse than an unanswered door. I could handle this. I took a deep breath and rested my hands on my thighs, leaning forward to calm myself. My heart stopped as I saw the ground at my feet, and any semblance of calm I had evaporated. There, leading from me to the offensively silent door, was a trail of sparkling blue aura. It danced along the ground beneath my feet and showed no signs of fading. I knew what it meant, and I couldn’t allow them to be hurt. My hand went for the handle and tried to turn, but the door failed to open as I pushed. Locked.

  Pressure built behind my eyes as I tried to think. Danger. All I could think of was danger, and of a flavor I didn’t recognize. Were the dead still returning? Had they failed to escape their mother’s corpse this time? What would I find on the other side of this door? A thousand images flashed before my eyes as I frantically pushed and pounded on the door. Splinters broke off into my hand as I made enough noise to startle the neighbors, but still no one answered. I could see the day of calm disappearing. I could see the girls, killed as I had been. I had to know. I couldn’t keep begging to be let in. The sparks on the ground warned of danger and the quiet behind the door confirmed it. I couldn’t wait, so I walked to the window beside it. Curtains prevented me from seeing inside, but I wasn’t there just to look. I frantically searched the ground for a stone, finding one just larger than a fist in only a few moments. I fumbled as I tried to pick it up and my heartbeat pulsed through my fingers.

  No one came to investigate when the glass shattered. Not from the surrounding homes, and not from inside. That didn’t ring true, but I didn’t care. I needed to make sure Junia and Millie were alright. I didn’t think to protect myself from the sharp edges of the broken glass as I climbed through the window. I barely noticed the tearing of my clothes or the cutting of flesh as I awkwardly climbed inside. I needed to see them. I needed to save them. I had to follow the aura at all costs.

  As I finally scrambled into the small, ruined home, the muffins I had brought scattered across the floor. My bag had caught on a shard of glass and I hadn’t noticed. It didn’t matter. I could find them more food. The home looked cleaner than every other time I had visited. The cupboards were closed and no dishes were about. No stained towels from Junia desperately trying to clean up after her sister. The cleanliness was a lie. I could tell by the smell. Something was terribly, terribly wrong. And it took less than a breath to discover what.

  The quieted weren’t getting up anymore. They weren’t coming back, and they weren’t hurting anyone. This much at least was confirmed as I looked toward Junia’s voice.

  “No, mom. I’m not the one who broke the window, I promise! I didn’t do it! Can we please have dinner now? Millie is so hungry…” she pleaded, and my eyes widened in horror. She pulled at her mother’s dress as she begged and I put my hand over my mouth.

  ‘How can she not tell? How can she not know?’ Junia’s mother was dead. Quieted, just like in every other loop. And her still corpse held a crying and soiled Millie. Junia kept speaking to her like a child to her mother, completely unaware of the emptiness of the body in front of her.

  “Miss, can you tell my mom that you broke the window? Please? She is so angry already… please, we don’t want to be in trouble…” she begged.